


Figures of Speech

by aphrodite_mine



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-05
Updated: 2011-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:21:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Rogue is the mountain and she is the air</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Figures of Speech

Kitty's not sure where the logic comes from, in fact, she's not even sure there _is_ any logic to be found in this situation, but she's staring at her not-quite-boyfriend's girlfriend's hands like they are the living embodiment of the second coming of Christ… and wait a minute here, Kitty's Jewish so this metaphor doesn't even make sense. But in a way, it works for how she's feeling, with the whole 'not making sense' thing. Not the Jesus thing. Kitty's pretty sure that she doesn't think of Rogue – make that Marie – as Jesus, just as something that defies all kinds of logic. Something that doesn't quite fit in her religion.

So, maybe the metaphor works after all.

Kitty isn't even entirely sure how she feels about the situation, not _really_ anyways. She supposes she feels some measure of jealousy that there is hand-holding going on at all, and hers isn't the hand being held. But aside from that? Nothing. She can't get a reading on the damn situation other than staring at their hands, those inches where bare skin meets bare skin and feeling a sort of twinge in the back of her throat that might be equated to swallowing something the wrong way but is probably and most likely attributed to her jealousy.

She keeps getting tripped up on metaphors, looking at them like this. Like that Jesus thing, where does it even come from? She looks at them, looking at each other, finally able to touch, finally able to do more than hold hands and _hell, if I were her, if I were him, I wouldn't be sitting out here with my clothing on,_ and she thinks of oranges, and pictures her calloused fingers slowly peeling back the skin and separating the fruit into juicy sections, sucking on the pieces, the water dripping down her chin.

Storm insists that if Rogue – there it is again – Marie is to stay at the mansion she'll have to continue training like everyone else, so the next morning Kitty finds herself next to her in the changing room, zipping up stiff leather and averting her eyes. She thinks of celebrating Christmas for the first time with the other students when she first came to the school, the Professor displaying a menorah on the mantle and letting her light it each night. She remembers the quick flare of the matches as she snapped them against the box, trying to light as many candles as she could before the match burnt down to her fingertips. Once she burnt herself, yelping out and dropping the smoking remnants of wood on the floor, taking her sore finger into her mouth.

She looks at Ro—Marie—calmly pulling her hair back now and she can remember the singe of pain on her nerve endings. There was, she thinks now, tucking her own hair back, the tiniest bit of pleasure in it. It's a remembrance like an echo of feeling in her skin and she wonders what it would have been like to touch Rogue before…

\--

Storm arranges teams in the Danger Room; Kitty wonders if the arrangement is intentional to force Bobby and Marie against her. There are few moments for glances and wonderings before the simulation starts and things fade to metaphors and similes once again. She is lost to the burst and fade of it, phasing and running, sweating with concentration. Kitty is moving in slow motion, but still meeting every move that the Room throws. She catches the determination set in Marie's eyes, lips parted slightly to breathe. Kitty is thinking that Rogue's lips are just the same color as the roses outside her window and she wants to breathe in their luscious scent. Then suddenly something breaks free and before either of them knows it, Marie's bare hand is on Kitty's face and her expression (triumphant, framed by loosened streaks of white) reveals that she's forgotten what she's become. Everyone stills, staring at the two of them. Kitty sees tiny explosions behind her pale eyes, mouth opening slowly because she's forgetting to breathe.

"Rogue," Bobby says softly, hand on her shoulder (touching again), remembering one thing but forgetting another. She gasps and runs from the gym, taking her hand back from Kitty's face like the surface would swallow her whole. And it's like Marie cast a hook and invisible line to Kitty's cheek with her touch because after only a second's pause Kitty follows, heedless of the stares that accompany them out the doors.

\--

She's looking through the banister at something she's not supposed to see. Like the time when she was eleven and she sneaked halfway down the stairs and couldn't tear her eyes from the blinking television below – her father watching _X-Files_ late Sunday night. She stares transfixed in much the same way now, looking up instead of down. Marie is running up the steps, down the hallway, undoing her uniform as she goes. "Fuck… oh fuck," she says and Kitty stares, unblinking, like that time watching the television, knowing that she shouldn't be here, knowing that she shouldn't even want to be here. But she does, and her mouth is opened a little in concentration, watching this girl she hardly knows (does anyone ever really know each other?) break down. Kitty thinks that she'll be in trouble if she gets caught unless she's the one doing the catching.

The match is in her hand and it is burning, burning slowly down. She watches the flame, breathing softly so as to encourage the flame and not to put it out. She's transfixed as it flickers and grows stronger, eating away at the wooden fiber, heat creeping ever closer to her skin. She doesn't flinch, but rather breathes in with a spike of desire when the flame runs out and hits her skin. She takes the first step up, eyes still high above, and the thrill as each stair is scaled is almost ridiculous.

She thinks momentarily of Bobby, still in the Danger Room, sparring with robots and holograms. She remembers his touch leaving her cold like the Chicago winters.

She recalls her first flight, peering out the window at the tendrils of cloud curling down the Rockies and then finally enveloping the craggy rock, hiding the ground from view. She imagines what its like to have that thickness descent upon you, sucking each breath through water vapor; coiling, just waiting to take you in. That's how it is when she finds herself in the doorway of Marie's room, breathing hard, as though she's had to fight the very atmosphere.

Seeing the world at thirty-four thousand feet has nothing on this moment.

Rogue is the mountain and she is the air, Bobby condensed thick and impenetrable between them until this moment when Marie tilts her head to the side and gestures, unsmiling, for Kitty to come in. There is a break in the clouds but it's not sunlight that pours in.

They sit on the bed, and she looks at Rogue's face, at the slightly undone zipper and exposed neck and shoulders, and suddenly has this intense craving for meat even though she's been trying hard to keep to a vegetarian regimen. And she's not even hungry, its about the desire and wanting what's forbidden and right in front of her, so close she could just… reach out and take it. It creeps through her body like a parasite, making short work of her resistance.

Kitty remembers that when she was little she used to count herself to sleep using the quilt her grandmother made. She'd lie there and count row after row of carefully stitched squares, perfectly methodological, the patterns there, and she would count them, knowing she was approaching the darkness of sleep when she reaches the frayed edges. It was as simple as order slipping into chaos. This is how she feels sitting next to Rogue – Marie – on the bed.

Kitty counts the squares between them, silently in her head, until Marie catches her chin with shaky fingertips and lifts Kitty's face to hers. Leather uniforms are pushed aside in exchange for endless skin and the numbers with them. There are hands and heat and tongues and taste, all like Kitty has only known before in those dreams she hides even from herself.

All she has left are memories and metaphors; figures of speech, empty efforts to describe the exact color of Rogue's bared breast.

The only problem here is Bobby. He's always there between them, unmoving, stony and silent like the ice walls he builds. Neither says his name, but it glistens on their lips, "Bobby, Bobby." The silence building, growing like the pressure between their hips. This isn't about him, but maybe its not about Rogue or Kitty either. Perhaps it's only about skin on skin and silence and sound.


End file.
